Deception (26 page)

For a profession that prides itself on obscurity, publicity is a sign of shameful failure. Most spies retire quietly to the shadows after they are exposed. Not so Ms Chapman. Her metamorphosis from a provincial teenager to life as a go-getting émigré, then as a failed spy and finally to being her country's leading political sex symbol says only a little about her, but a lot about Russia's attitude to spies, the West, women and its own rulers. The spy scandal in which Ms Chapman featured came at a bad time for Russia's rulers. The country had suffered the harshest recession in the G-
20
in the previous year, and in the summer of
2010
an outbreak of wildfires had shamed the authorities. A thick, stinking smog enveloped Moscow, making one side of Red Square invisible from the other. Blame fell on the poorly privatised state forestry services, which had all but abolished the vital function of fire prevention. Contempt for the regime was growing elsewhere too. Promises of modernisation had proved empty. Trust in the security services and the police had plunged since Mr Putin took power.

The spy scandal thus cast an unwelcome light on two of the regime's weakest points: corruption and incompetence. The illegals appeared to be an expensive throwback to old Soviet tactics. They had – at least according to the published version of events – failed to gain any secrets and had been under American observation from the start of their mission. Despite the failure of their mission, some of them deserved praise for their personal talents and dedication: Heathfield's brains, Semenko's language skills, or even Lazaro's decades of service all stand out; among the women, the professional career of ‘Cynthia Murphy', a financial adviser to rich Americans, was a solid achievement. Yet from the beginning it was the most junior and incompetent of the spies who became the celebrity.
^am
She has posed semi-naked for glossy magazines; she hosts
Mysteries
, a lightweight television programme; she has an iPhone app allowing people to play poker with her electronic avatar and has even registered her surname (in fact her ex-husband's) as a trademark. Chapman-branded products from cosmetics to consumables are on sale or in development. In an article headlined ‘Anna Inc',
²⁹
Newsweek
magazine even termed her ‘Russia's hottest cultural icon'. As well as her showbiz, media and marketing efforts, Ms Chapman has a job at a financial entity called FondServiceBank. This is mainly notable for its close links with the defence industry and for its initials FSB. Grigory Belkin, a spokesman, says it jumped at the chance to have her. ‘It's very prestigious for any bank to have an employee with a specific background . . . linked with doing helpful things for the state.'

Ms Chapman has also moved into politics: with a prominent but nominal role at
Molodaya Gvardiya
(Young Guard). Founded in
2005
, this is the youth wing of the ruling United Russia Party. Though it portrays itself as an apolitical do-gooding organisation, keen on ecology, education and cleaning up government, it is in fact part of a wider Kremlin attempt to forestall any mass protests that might threaten the regime. A nightmare for the ‘political technologists' who advise Russia's rulers is a movement on the lines of Ukraine's
2005
Orange Revolution – a spontaneous youth revolt against a corrupt and incompetent regime, prompted by blatant election rigging. Russia may seem unpromising ground for this, but this does not mean that the authorities are complacent. Like the parallel organisation
Nashi
(Ours), the Young Guard offers its members excitement, glamour, perks such as holidays and a professional and educational leg-up. It also has a thuggish streak, harassing opposition figures and interfering foreigners.

She appears less useful to her real-life business employers. Yulia Shamal, head producer at the ‘Mysteries' show, says the new presenter doesn't have time to do research but does come to editorial meetings. ‘Anya remembered she knew this clever successful person, an artist actually, who not only saw a UFO but managed to take a picture of it,' says Ms Shamal, struggling to find an example of her star presenter's editorial talents.

Ms Chapman's biography does not suggest that she was a class act. But she was an effective one. Her glib but accented English, imperfectly tinted hair, garish clothes and unremarkable professional career were not a clever bluff, but the real thing. Neither ferociously clever nor blessed with steel nerves or hypnotic people skills, she never sought to match, like Heathfield, the talents of the global elite; her forte was to dance with them, to date them and to work alongside them. As a spy, her tradecraft was startlingly sloppy. In London, her company Southern Union was unable even to spell its phoney address properly on official documentation. Her written English was embarrassingly bad. Under pressure from the FBI she failed even to buy a mobile phone without mistakes that would shame a trainee in the first week of a course at Fort Monckton. In a panic, she called her father on an easily intercepted telephone line.

If that signalled the decline in professionalism of what was once the most efficient bit of Soviet bureaucracy, the way Ms Chapman got her job highlighted something else: nepotism. It is easy to infer that she had gained her plum job, complete with generous taxpayer backing for her business, thanks to birth not brains. Andrei Soldatov, the spy-watcher and author of
The New Nobility
,
says: ‘All she did was to try and exploit her father's connections in the SVR for money.' Yulia Latynina, a leading opposition journalist, refers to Ms Chapman as ‘a very high-class prostitute in the West, with the state paying for all of her beautiful underwear and all her expenses'.

If it is hard to see what service Ms Chapman has rendered to Russia abroad, it is easy to see what she has done on her return. The failed spy has been a blank canvas on which the regime's propagandists have painted their own image of Russia: unstoppable abroad, electrically exciting at home, youthful, daring and sexy. But the first priority was damage control. Aleksei Navalny, an opposition activist who has made his name with an online campaign against corruption in big business, notes that a bad image for Russia's spies also damages Mr Putin, who has played heavily on his own background in the KGB. Mr Putin's former senior speech-writer Simon Kordonsky, now a professor at the liberal Higher School of Economics, sees the regime's eagerness to get its spies out of American custody as a manifestation of ‘corporate solidarity' among Chekists, who felt compelled to show that ‘one of their own cannot be taken'. But as her celebrity status grew, Ms Chapman's allure, not failure, quickly became a dominant theme. Some seasoned KGB veterans seem genuinely awestruck by her nerveless approach. Viktor Cherkashin, a former counter-intelligence officer in Washington and West Germany who retired in
1991
, says she has the right mix of qualities for the modern age.

 

A person who can behave so naturally, be such a well-known figure in Russia, be part of high society, present a TV show – anyone who can behave like that is an ideal member of an illegals programme.

 

The growing hype was laced with another potent ingredient: anger over the spies' betrayal. A Russian official told the
Kommersant
newspaper that an assassin had already been dispatched to deal with the defector who betrayed the illegals, though this seems to have been bravado.
³⁰
Mr Putin, after an evening singing patriotic ditties with the returned spies, said grimly that traitors end up ‘in the gutter' and blamed ‘treason' for the spies' exposure. This approach fits broader propaganda themes favoured by the regime: cynical Western penetration and manipulation of Russian society, the ruthless use of foreign money, and the Soviet-style heroism of the state's servants in difficult conditions.

In Russia's glitzy, sex-obsessed media culture, Ms Chapman's mysterious past and curvy figure were an easy sell. Joanna Seddon, an expert on branding, sees the ex-spy as a classic example of a celebrity who has ‘leveraged her misfortunes into not only media popularity but also tangible wealth'. She likens Ms Chapman to Martha Stewart, the billionaire American businesswoman who launched a triumphant commercial comeback after her five months in jail for insider trading. Each woman, she notes, ‘maintained the rightness of her actions throughout her troubles, providing a reason for her public to believe in her'. Having averted disaster and created a commercial triumph, the culmination of the propaganda response was to turn Ms Chapman into a political asset for a tired-looking regime that presides over a drab and increasingly backward country. Ms Chapman's symbolic role in Young Guard provided the perfect platform. Yana Lantarova, the organisation's Federal Charity Director, gushes about her new colleague:

 

She's a very profound person – she loves her homeland sincerely. In the short time that she's joined us she's learnt how to speak sincerely and convincingly about it.

 

Ms Lantarova adds helpfully that Ms Chapman ‘fires up' the movement's male members. The enthusiasm is not universal. Kirill Schito, a member of the movement's governing council and of the Moscow municipal assembly, is slightly less flattering, insisting that the benefit is ‘mutual' and that Ms Chapman is ‘quite smart'. But however artificially staged Ms Chapman's initial foray into politics may have been, it has struck a genuine chord among at least some ordinary Russians. Support is most enthusiastic in her native Volgograd. Referring to the legendary Second World War Soviet spy, local journalist Stanislav Anishchenko explains:

Our national hero is Stirlitz, a spy that fought against fascism. Anna Chapman is Stirlitz as a girl. So our media made her a hero and we organised the song contest. People always need heroes – that's why Anna Chapman was born.

 

The star-struck Mr Anishchenko even organised a song contest in honour of his city's most famous daughter. The winner was ‘Anna Chapman is not Mata Hari' – a reference to a Dutch dancer and courtesan shot for spying in the First World War. It captures the nationalistic pride that Russians hold in their spies, though the doggerel lyrics are equally dire in the original Russian as in this loose translation.
³¹

 

America's symbols of freedom,

The model of democrats' wisdom,

It's a home, not prison for nations,

The immigrants' high expectation,

You get comfortable life as a present,

The White House guys are so pleasant,

They can't sleep without your well-being,

Without helping earning your living,

It's not so easy as it sounds,

Sometimes all dreams fall to the ground,

One day that a girl is simple and shy,

Can wake up and find she is a spy,

If only poor Anna could know,

That this road is not safe to go,

Then you'd give up business for sure,

And go to the place where's secure,

To Mars or better to Venus,

To meet no misters, no peers,

To look at the earth from a distance,

But suffer from lonely existence,

The world is full of secrets, believe me,

You cannot get it, just leave it!

You don't want surprises? – keep an eye open!

 

Be Glorious, all spies of Russia!

Be famous from Europe to Asia!

Your work and efforts are priceless,

Your fame and your records are doubtless,

You went through fire and water,

Kept busy the police headquarters,

Said nothing in chambers of torture,

Kept heads up in all misfortunes,

Anna Chapman is not Mata Hari! (repeated four times)

 

This knee-jerk nationalism is a perfect antidote to public apathy and disgruntlement. Ms Chapman also contrasts sharply with the ranks of United Russia, mostly filled with balding middle-aged men. Sergei Markov, a Duma deputy with close Kremlin ties, says:

 

People are bored with the talking heads on the TV; they are interested in adventure and in action. Spies like these are really popular in the country. She fits the bill perfectly and she is really attractive.

 

He also sees Putinesque qualities in Ms Chapman's curves:

 

Vladimir Putin is regarded as a sexual champion as he is very cool and very sexy. Both [Ms Chapman and Putin] are spies – both of them young, healthy, energetic, sexually attractive – and they met publicly. This is about making United Russia sexier and cooler . . . a successful political message needs to be combined with a successful non-political message.

This linking of Putin and Chapman has already started to sink into the popular consciousness. In May
2011
a shoot-em-up game called
Voinushka
(
Punch-up
) was launched on popular Russian social networking websites. A youthful-looking khaki-clad Mr Putin features as the commander, setting tasks for the person playing the undemanding game. He has a redheaded assistant, showing voluptuous décolleté, wearing a Soviet-style military hat and toting a rifle. The game's designers say they did not consciously choose Ms Chapman as a model.